NEPAL: A young man’s spine is broken following police torture

Dear friends, 

The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has received information regarding alleged illegal arrest and torture of a 21-year old man whose spine was broken as a result of the abuse. Mr. Nijamuddin Sekh was arrested on 21 July 2011 in Nepalgunj from police officers from the District Police Office, Banke under allegations of abduction. In the DPO, he was tortured for about one hour during the night, and then blindfolded, handcuffed and pushed from what seemed to be a high place. As a result of the torture, the victim has suffered extensive injuries, including a fractured lumbar vertebra, which may take months to heal and may prevent him from going back to his work. The police continuously refused to inform the victim’s father about his son’s situation and deny that the victim’s injuries are due to torture. This is the second serious allegation of police torture in the DPO, Banke received within ten days. 

CASE NARRATIVE: 

According to the information we have received a 21-year-old carpenter, Mr. Nijamuddin Sekh alias Bablu, was arrested by police at around 8.45 am on 21 July 2011 in Nepalgunj while he was carrying wood for construction work. In the police van which was bringing him to the District Police Office (DPO), Banke, he tried to call his father to tell him about his arrest but the policemen took his phone away from him and their conversation was brutally interrupted. The policemen switched his phone off and his father could not get in touch with him anymore. 

Bablu was taken in a room on the top floor of the DPO, Banke. The policemen who had arrested him told him that if he acknowledged his involvement in an abduction case he would be released immediately. Bablu refused to accept the charges and as he was trying to leave the room, a policeman named Ashok Yadav (rank unknown) reportedly kicked him in the face. The policemen handcuffed him on his back and blindfolded him with a piece of cloth and left the room, leaving him there alone. He stayed there for the whole day, without being provided food or water. 

After the night came, four to five policemen entered the room and asked him to admit that he had been involved in an abduction case. They tried to convince him that he would be released if he accepted to confess such a crime. As Bablu refused again, the policemen took him to another location and made him lay down. They then reportedly started to beat him with their sticks, punched him and kicked him with their police boots. The victim was tortured for one hour while being interrogated about the abduction. 

He was then left alone. When the policemen came back after a while, he asked to go to the toilet but the policemen insulted him instead. According to the victim, he was then brought to some location he could not see as he was blindfolded and reportedly pushed from the back from what seemed to be a high location. He lost consciousness. 

When he woke up, he found himself in a hospital bed, his whole body was aching and he was unable to move it. Policemen were present in the hospital and he asked them to call his relatives but they ignored his request. The hospital took X-rays and video X-rays of his back. Afterwards, the victim was made to sleep on a seat in a police van, was taken to a big house and ordered to wait in the van. A policeman brought some papers and forced him to put his thumb prints on them although the victim did not want to. 

The victim fainted again and woke up to find himself back in the hospital. He has not been given any arrest warrant or detention letter, as required by the law, and has still not been informed about the abduction case under whose allegations he was arrested. It came to be known that the victim was registered under a fake name in the hospital, therefore preventing his identification. 

According to the doctor, one of the victim’s lumber vertebras is broken. He needs assistance to get up and sit and he needs support from a bell. There is a blue and red mark on his left sole and his lower lip is swollen. There are scratches on his chest. According to the doctor, due to the seriousness of his injuries, the victim will need a long time to recover fully. As the victim is a carpenter, this means that it will take a long time before he can go back to his job, seriously jeopardizing his and his family’s economic situation. The victim fears that he may be tortured again if he is brought back to the police station. 

The victim’s father was left uninformed of his son’s arrest and whereabouts for several days. As the police had switched off the victim’s phone and repeatedly denied his requests to contact his family to inform about his situation, his father could not contact him. The day following the victim’s arrest, his brother visited the DPO as well as the Ward Police Office, Nepalgunj to check whether his brother was detained there but to no avail, the police did not give any information about Bablu’s whereabouts although he had been arrested and detained in the DPO the day and night before. It is only four days after the victim’s arrest that his father came to hear in a tea shop people talking about a young Muslim boy who has been brought by the police to the hospital with a backbone broken. He therefore went to Kohalpur Medical College and found his son. The policeman staying at his son’s bed side prevented them from talking to each other, so it is only later that day that he could learn about the situation. He then filed a complaint at the regional office of the National Human Rights Commission, Nepalgunj. 

The victim was remanded twice: once on 22 July 2011, he was remanded for the first time for five days with effect from the previous day and on 26 July he was remanded for ten days. On 28 July his father filed an application for physical and mental checkup of the victim under the provisions 5-3 of the Torture Compensation Act. On the same day, the Banke District Court Registrar Dilli Ratna Shrestha wrote a letter to the DPO, Banke mandating them to provide a medical checkup to the victim within 3 days and to include the medical report in the case documentation. 

Superintendent of Police, Dinesh Amatya, from the DPO, Banke denied that torture had been inflicted on the victim and instead alleged that the victim’s backbone was broken after he tried to escape from the police. He is quoted as having said “He is a chain smoker and drunkard. That is the main cause of his health problem. He will recover soon. In my 21 year of service in police I have not found any detainee who has accepted that s/he is a criminal. There is a difference between being injured and being beaten up.” 

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: 

This is the second allegation of police torture resulting in serious injuries that we received from District Police Office, Banke, within ten days. In our urgent appeal AHRC-UAC-125-2011, we reported the case of a 49-year-old woman whose hand was broken after she was beaten up by two policewomen from DPO, Banke following an order from a higher-ranking officer. 

Those cases illustrate that the systematic use of torture as a tool of investigation to extract confessions in the police stations of Nepal is still condoned by the police hierarchy. Widespread impunity protects the perpetrators of torture and means that the victims have limited avenues for justice. They are therefore at the mercy of further abuses if they denounce the torture they have been inflicted. In light of the previous cases the AHRC has documented, it is likely that the victim will be at risk of further ill-treatment in retaliation of having spoken to human rights organizations should he be brought back to the DPO after he is discharged from the hospital. 

The AHRC is concerned that the lack of investigation and prosecutions of those who bear the command responsibility in previous cases nurtures a feeling of immunity among the perpetrators which emboldens them to continue to consider torture as a way to conduct an investigation and to encourage their subordinates to do so. The AHRC is therefore of the opinion that unless thorough investigations into allegations of torture leading to prosecutions of the perpetrators, in particular against those with the command responsibility of the torture, the government of Nepal’s pledge to end torture will remain mere lip-service. 

SUGGESTED ACTION: 
Please join us in calling for immediate medical treatment for the victim, a thorough and immediate investigation into those allegations of police torture and prosecutions against the perpetrators. 

Please be informed that the AHRC will write a separate letter to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. 

To support this case, please click here: SEND APPEAL LETTER